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Overwatch 2 will test 6v6 with director open to permanent change

In a lengthy address, Director Aaron Keller explains the pros and cons of 5v5 and 6v6 in Overwatch 2 and explains what could result from tests.

Ozzie Mejia

July 25, 2024 11:00 AM

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One of the hottest topics of discussion in regards to Overwatch 2 has been the massive change from 6v6 to 5v5 team modes. For many fans of the original Overwatch, it was a change that resulted in a worse experience. After a few years on the market, Game Director Aaron Keller has determined that now is the time to go into a deep discussion about the differences between the two formats, revealing that 6v6 play will be tested in the future and that Blizzard's Team 4 is open to a potential change.

Keller goes into a deep discussion on the subject over on the Overwatch 2 website. He talks about the process of deciding on 6v6 play for the original Overwatch, fixing the issue of duplicate heroes, instituting the Role Queue system that forced 2-2-2 lineups, and the sea change to Overwatch 2 and its implementation of 5v5 play. He explains (with visual aids) that Blizzard noticed a big difference in queue times between Overwatch 2 and its predecessor, noting that the change to the 5v5 system is comparatively much shorter than the original Overwatch with the Role Queue system.

For Keller and the rest of the Overwatch 2 team, they appear to have noticed the demand for a return to the 6v6 format of the original game. However, Keller notes that a shift wouldn't be that simple and could potentially harm the game as a whole, citing the fear of returning to longer queue times. However, with the team also experiencing issues balancing 5v5 (Tanks, specifically), the idea of potentially going back to 6v6 has come up again. Keller notes that Overwatch 2 will look into testing 6v6 play in the near future and adds that the development team will be monitoring these tests very closely.

Here's what Keller had to say about what the Overwatch team is doing next:

Because of the challenges mentioned previously we are focused on making 5v5 the best experience that it can be. However, because we operate as a service to our players, we always remain open-minded to re-evaluating our decisions based on your actions and feedback, to give you the best game experience we can. Rather than introduce a disruptive, permanent change to the game, we'd prefer to explore the space further and make changes based on that exploration.

With that said, we're looking at running a series of events to try out different core team composition formats in Overwatch 2. The community has, juuuust once or twice, suggested a test. Why not put various forms of 6v6 in the game in order to gauge the results? We agree, and based on your feedback, we’re exploring how we can test different forms of 6v6 in the game to gauge the results. This is taking some time, however, for reasons that may not be readily apparent.

The first, and honestly largest, reason is the need to do this in a way that allows the game to have optimized technical performance (I’m referring to framerate and memory constraints) with 12 players in a match. There have been quite a few upgrades and additions to Overwatch 2 that have an impact on the performance of the game. These range from new features like allied outlines and enabling healer vision by default, the addition of more technically demanding hero kits, as well as visual upgrades to UI, heroes and maps. In a 6v6 setting, these upgrades can have significant impacts for our players, causing the game to underperform on older systems. Overwatch is a fast-paced game, and maintaining a game that runs smoothly across all our platforms is important for the player’s experience. While a limited time test could arrive sooner, the team is still investigating exactly how long it would take to permanently increase performance across the game. This would be a large effort that would most likely take at least several seasons to accomplish.

Another issue, and one that still gives me anxiety about opening this Pandora’s Box, is what to do with queue times if enough players prefer 6v6 to keep some form of it around. The team was not able to solve this issue previously. While we have some ideas now, there’s no guarantee that they will work. Is there a world where people are willing to live with long queue times to play this format? Maybe, but that’s a pretty risky move to make. We also have tens of millions of new players that have only played 5v5. We want to be openly mindful not to frustrate those who like the game as it is today.

The outcome of these tests would give us a lot of valuable information to consider moving forward. We’d run the test for a few weeks and gauge interest from the community. Then we’d measure the impact it had on the other experiences in Overwatch 2, like 5v5, Arcade, etc. We’d take the lessons from this playtest to see what we can learn about the mode within the current game ecosystem and for the future of Overwatch. We would reflect carefully on the learnings from whatever test we run and explore how to best give players what's being asked for. Whether that’s a world of 5v5, 6v6 or even both, is for future us to figure out.

The future of Overwatch 2 suddenly looks uncertain. Not in an "Is this game dying?" sense, but in a sense that it could look drastically different based on how the player base reacts to these tests. There's no word on when the 6v6 tests will begin, though Keller notes that something could be coming in Season 13. Regardless, this is a development worth monitoring. We'll have more to say about this down the road, so keep it on Shacknews for more information.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?